Movie Review: Wild Tales directed by Damian Szifron

I am watching at least a movie every week, many of them are good to very good, but I rarely can say about a film that it reflects fully the dynamism and intensity of life. That kind of organic outburst of energy going beyond any comprehensible and acceptable behavior.

Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes) a multi-awarded movie by the young Argentinian film director Damian Szifron is made of six stand alone short visual stories. The characters are unable to control their emotions and vengeance is what make them ignore any social conventions. Many of them are the victim of their own greadiness for violence. 

Although the emotions uniting the disparate episodes are the same, their framing and representations as as diverse as the diversity of human nature in general. There are the two alpha men on the highway crossing a heartbreaking landscape ending up carbonized in an embrace that the police officers took as an illicit love affair; the betrayed bride at the middle class wedding that swears to make her groom pay with the life of it, not before storming around everyone, particularly the women her man slept with; the loan shark who destroyed a beautiful family who ends up in a pool of blood killed by the cook who thought that returning to prison is much safer than surviving every day in freedom; or the people mysteriously gathered in a plane drove by Pasternak who got out of his mind completely and crash it in his parents´ house. 

The violence is framed in a very ironic way. Laughing will make one forget the outrageous fight which is just about to happen and which does not seem to end up either too soon or well. The brevity of the six stories told in about two hours is a good example of visual narrative. The power of the image, built of different emotional sequences, make the story relatable and at a very great extent memorable. 

The intense horror of everyday life, in a way. But the sequences do have so much vital energy that we ignore in real life and it is very much in the chore of human life but obliterated by civilized behavior and politeness. Nevertheless it is there and Relatos Salvajes - which I watched on MUBI - says the human truth bluntly. 

Honestly, what would it happen if we will do what we are often thinking to do - especially against those people who bother us in a way or another? Homo hominis lupus, that´s it...

Rating: 5 stars

Movie Review: Josep directed by Aurel

 

Josep directed by the award-winning cartoonist Aurel (aka Aurélien Froment) is important for more than one (good) reason. 

First and foremost, it´s the testimony about the less-known Catalan artist Josep Bartoli. The movie is focused on his escape from France to Mexico - where he will be the lover of another rebel, Frida Kahlo - and afterwards to America, where he will be an acquintance of many famous name of the time, among which Rothko, Charles Pollock or De Kooning, as told on his deathbed by one of his saviors, a French gendarme which at the time was part of the repression system of the Vichy regime. The stories of Spanish refugees from the civil war into France during the war is rarely told and this movie is doing it in a Goya-style of artistic depictions.  The animation is done in the vein of Aurel´s cartoons published regularly in Le Monde or Le Monde Diplomatique, among others. The messages are mostly left-wing, completely in the vein of the character.

Another interesting reason for watching this movie was the purely humanist message which overpasses the typical divisions shaped by war. Particularly the civil war has the potential of destroying deeply and sometimes irreparably the human trust. In Josep, the unique human contribution can save a life. It is a good reminder for those depicting the world in a simplistic black-and-white brush. 

This movie was an outstanding intellectual encounter revealing how limited is my knowledge about the Spanish Civil War and its intellectuals actors. It made me think that each couple of years, the intellectual history of various parts of the world is going through tremendous challenges and tragedies - the Pinochet dictatorship, Rwanda genocide, Armenian genocide, the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Balkan wars and so so many more - that may leave a deep trauma while forcing the intellectual investigation into unknown creative areas. An interesting observation can´t wait to futher explore. 

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

 ´I speak so many languages, but I am understand by no one´.

One needs to survive exile - self-imposed, forced upon - more than once in order to really understand what does it really mean to be on the run never allowed to return in that complex yet simple real called home. Complex, because it means so many things - a language, an address, a culture, your communication intimacy with your parents, the relationship (real or imaginary) with your parents and ancestors themselves - but simple as sometimes one simple word is enough to bring you back. 

´We, the ill fated, we took refuge in literature´, because of its ´prophetic nature´. Once the narrator´s father died - in other words, reuniting with the ´mind of the universe´ - she is retracing the roots of the exile through books and authors, literary quotes and observations of intellectual nature. A ´Hosseini descendant´, the last in a long line of autodidacts and anarchists, the self-appointed Zebra is retracing part of their exile journey without being able though to reach in person the physical shore from all this began: Iran. The duality of her condition deepened the dilemma: she is a woman whose fate in her home country is condemned by the strict religious rule; she may be against the US-imposed sanctions, but once returned back at home she may risk being imprisoned and accused of being a spy. What is left from this country of her?

The multi-awarded Call me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is an intellectual inquiry about the exile of the heart and of the soul. It contributes in a significant way to the increasingly growing literature on this topic by its complicated conceptual outreach. There are many discussions that I would have expect to see continued, developed or further explained in the book and this is the risk of opening too many intellectual fields at once. There are also situations when I´ve found the intellectual discourse artificious. But overall, my intellectual refugee mind was set alit during most of the reading, on alert to reconsider, revisit and confirm my own feelings about the condition of being an intellectual woman whose roots were suddenly cut from her place of birth. 

For all the good reasons, Call me Zebra brings a valuable contribution to the intellectual take on exile, a topic sadly so common nowadays. The Iranian-American Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is also the founder of the bi-annual symposium Litteratures of Annihilation, Exile and Resistance.

Rating: 3.5 stars

 

Book Review: The Gardener of Baghdad by Ahmad Ardalan

 

The Gardener of Baghdad by Ahmad Ardalan is a classical romantic story set in Iraq, connecting two separate destinies through a long lost memoir. Adnan is about to sell his shop in Baghdad, planning to escape a world that is upside down following the US invasion and the incessant civil war. While sorting out the books, he discovers a manuscript written by Ali, ´the gardener of Baghdad´. 

In an Iraq at the mercy of the British occupation, ruled by a King who will be soon killed by the revolutionaries, a love story between Ali and the daughter of a British military is burgeoning. The story takes place in the turbulent 1950s and ends up in the day when the royal family was massacred. Altough The Gardener of Baghdad includes many political and anti-colonialist references - mostly displayed through the behavior of the British characters featured - it is mostly a story about love and betrayal and the strange intricacies of the human destinies. The political turbulences may force and delay those human circumstances, but in the end there are the universal desires and feelings prevailing.

I´ve had access to the book in audio format, and for the first time I realized how important the voice of the narrator is for enjoying - or not - a book. Although I am not so picky when it comes to book read by the authors themselves, when there is an actor doing it, I tend to be overcritical. In this case, I do not enjoy the voice over at all, thus the long time I´ve spent listening to the book. As there was a story and some slight unexpected turn of events, I would have normally listen to the book within one day. In this case, it lasted over 10 days as I could not convince myself to turn back as was expecting to face the unpleasant audio experience. It is a very personal, subjective experience and others may dissent in this respect but in my case, even it did not alter the literary experience, it delayed it´s full enjoyment. As I am relatively new in the field of audiobooks, I´ve found this experience worth sharing. 

I recommend The Gardener of Baghdad to anyone interested in a slow paced romance taking place in the wrong time. The ending made my smile, because it was both unexpected and romance kind of sweet. As someone interested to read more stories set in the Middle East authored by people acknowledgeable about the region, I would happily read more books like this in the near future.

Rating: 3 stars 

Another Fiction Story about Startups: Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

´We´re changing the world through what we do, making a positive impact, and having a blast while doing it´. How familiar does it sound to you???

I am always very curious to read more and more books about startup culture and its failures because such books and their characters say so much about my adult world and realities. As someone who worked with and for startups and with friends actively involved in this field, I can´t have enough to discover familiar tropes and hilarious ideas.

Black Buck. A novel by Mateo Askaripour is actually one of the best on this topic I´ve read in a very long time. Good both as writing and equally from the point of view of the plot and its character building. It has so many ideas so familiar for the world of startups, while creates a very unique story which is getting more and more out of control.

Meet Darren Vender, your everyday Starbucks employee, welcoming for four years on the other side of the counter his fancy coffee customers. He is black, has a stable girlfriend since....for ever, lives with his mom and does not see himself anywhere. Until Rhett, one of his regular customers, had an offer for him. An unique offer for someone without any high education: to go into sales, at a startup with meeting rooms named as Qu´ran, Bhagavad Gita or Torah. Sumwun sells some special employee mental care packages, which are aimed at countering the classical therapy. There, Darren will be asked to charge his name to Buch - from...Starbucks - and get used with it. Also, to get used with a lot of money coming and going through the company, crazy trainings and employees bringing their piglet pets at work. In few months, his entire life changes and the changes seem to have no limit.

This attempt to push the limits of fiction - and of the plot - makes, among others, this book so different from many other startup-themed books. It develops into a criminal and financial thriller, with such a grotesque touch that one may not know if laughing or crying or both are the normal reactions.

Mateo Askaripour has no limits in painting this new order in the making and has a good kind of crazy way to say things: For instance, this description of Rhett´s house: ´His ceiling was a grattified version of the Sistine Chapel´s, coincidentally spray-painted by an artist who also went by the name Michelangelo´. Or this description of the morning traffic in Manhattan: ´slower than loading porn with dial-up in the nineties´. Last but not least, this detail about another startup guy, Barry, who masturbates every day to the view of the Statue of Liberty. The book is sometimes graphic but does not feel like it is extra, it´s just how things are and react together. 

The inter-textuality and the various inferences of story fragments are taking place very often, and one may be very careful when reading to do not miss some important, mostly time-related, details. Buck is writing the book as a story of his life adventures, ´from the penthouse of a one-hundred-one-year-old building worth millions of dollars that overlooks Central Park´, which is Lincoln Correctional Facility, an institution which belongs to the larger category of ´Prison´.

As much as I literally savoured the book, the general timeline for the story - 12 months, I´ve found a bit unrealistic. Indeed, there are so many things that in those fast-forwarding world can happen within a year, but what is happening in this story is not credible. A larger timeframe would have been a much better choice, in my humble reade´s opinion. At a great extent, this time compression alters the sense of many events and thus alters the story itself. 

I´ve also felt that some of the characters are unidimensional or just introduced in the story to make it look bigger, but this is the risk of having too many persons in the narrative.

Black Buck was on my TBR - built based on various inter-crossed recommendations - for a long time and I am glad I´ve finally succeeded to read it. Besides aiming high on my list of startup-related readings this book also showed how much your writing can lead you in creating a - crazy - world. Just a small fragment of our start-up world.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Book Blog Tour: Double Identity by Alison Morton

Oh, how much I love reading a good, fast-paced thriller. If it has an interesting international touch, the better...

Double Identity by Alison Morton was a pleasant surprise. I had the chance to read a short abstract of the plot, but I was not prepared for the full package of action every couple of paragraphs. I´ve read it in one sitting without taking too much care of what was happening in my immediate reading and non-fictional reality. I simply could not give up following Mélisende´s search for the reason and the person who killed her fiancé, while sleeping in a hotel room in a private hotel in London.

The story starts as a relatively private crime: Gérard, a trader of not too much importance, is discovered dead by night, following an injection with a mysterious substance. She is the first suspect. Mélisande is not a noone. Born in wealth pertaining from the pre-Revolutionary France,  with a British-born mother and a father owning a castle, she has an adventurous life of herself, with a very active past working in the special operations division of the French Army intelligence. She just gave up her military career in order to start a new life with her partner. It was not meant to be and she is forced to get back in the field.

Tracing back his boyfriend´s murder, there are octopus-like connections leading to ´non-friendly´ outside of the EU countries, revealing various inimities and institutional ironies within the EU itself. One may need a bit of political backgrund to fully taste the jokes and fine allusions, but not necessarily.

The story developes in a fast pace, but as in the case of any respectable good thriller, only the very last pages will reveal the culprits and the amplitude of the criminal connections. 

Although I´ve felt a couple of times that the dialogues are not necessarily at the same audacity with the descriptive moments, there is an entincing way of creating the suspense, with the sentences becoming shorter and as focused as arrows when there is action coming up or unfolding. The literary effects are particularly good.

There are a lot of characters brought to life in this story, not all of them clear enough or memorable enough, but the main ones are introduced in a very detailed way, with a strong social and national background which define their motivations as well as their social status.

In times of political troubles and strange social outbursts, Double Identity by Alison Morton offers a glimpse into the tensed movements taking place behind the closed doors and windows of the European financial and political scene. Those fascinated by this realm, as I do, will be delighted in this book. 

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered part of a blog book tour, by the opinions are, as usual, my own

Multicultural Children Book: Soraya´s Nowruz Dance by Anahita Tamaddon

 

Today is the first day of the new Persian New Year, Nowruz, celebrated all over Iran, Middle East, Caucasus, Europe, South Asia and America. It coincides with the first day of spring and through the rituals which are mostly family- and community-centered it is aimed to celebrate the nature renewal. 

Soraya´s Nowruz Dance - a bilingual edition, English and Persian - by Anahita Tamaddon, translation by Soudabeh Ashrafi is an elegant introduction of this holiday. Aimed at first grade children, it has a cute, family story. Soraya´s adventure into dancing takes place during the Nowruz festival and the story has enough hints to introduce the little ones to what may be for many a different holiday they don´t have too much- if any - exposure to. Soraya´s love for dance is told through beautiful, bold colourful illustrations entincing both children and their adult readers. 

As a bilingual story, it may also help children living abroad, or children in multicultural families to get acquainted to their heritage. A couple of month ago, a Persian friend of mine was unhappy that there are not too many English-Persian books around that could offer to her daughter a good background of her mother´s culture. Soraya´s Nowruz Dance makes a good contribution to the relatively limited number of titles in this respect. 

It is a book that you may want to read your children, even if there is no Persian connection, because it is so mind-healthy to teach children about different holidays and celebrations. Also, it could be easily used as reading material in kindergarten and schools aiming to increase the exposure to diversity of any kind.

Rating: 4 stars

The Other Realities of a 14 Years Old Girl

´J´ai quatorze ans et ce n´est pas une bonne nouvelle.

On va me marier et ce n´est pas une bonne nouvelle.

Je suis une fille et ce n´est pas une bonne nouvelle´.

I am 14 and this is not a good news (J´ai quatorze ans et ce n´est pas une bonne nouvelle) by Jo Witek is a relatively short book but done with a very strong and inspiring writing. It is the story of an innocent 14 yo girl, Efi, living in a remote, men ruled world, in a non-named country. She is back home from the city for the vacation time when suddenly her world is not more as it used to be. She is no more a child. Her body is an instrument of control. Her world is not as it used to be. She is only 14 but it seems that her life is in shreds. 

Soon, she is announced of her upcoming wedding with a man who is more than double her age. She is well guarded by her brother and not left outside the house inattended. Her mother, whose life started similarly, is overwhelmed by her new pregnancy.

Efi is decided to not accept this life setting of a life who does not belong to her. First, she is refugiating in her own mind, inspired by the verses of Emily Dickinson. From her remote island of the mind, she is planning her escape out of this forced destiny. Her first attempt fails and, in shame, she is brought back by the men of the village and forced to be married. The second time though she will succeed and I was so transposed by her story that I was almost breathless until I´ve found out what happened to her. 

Fortunately, Efi is not alone. Her brother helped her and there is an NGO in the city which - at least the second time - will come to her rescue. Thus, she is able to have a normal life: continuing her studies, pursuing her own career and being in charge with her own life. Not the life that her village people assume for the women who are escaping: either death or prostitution. Not only women bodies are under control, but they - mostly the men, but the complacent women as well - are fighting even harder to control the minds. The bodies are easier to be freed, while the minds can remain enslaved for ever.

The book has a very strong message, which is convened in a very diplomatic, smooth way, progressively, describing in a literary style the many ways in which women can be turned into slaves, from a very early age. The picture is accurate while maintaining a literary mindset which makes the contribution valuable for more than an educational reason. 

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Documentary Film: Showgirls of Pakistan

`Even if I will be in a burqa they will still be after me`.

Introduced during the Mughal Indian Empire - 1526-1857 - and criminalized during the British rule in the 19th century, murja dances are making a come-back as entertainment dance in Pakistan, but the dancers are often victims of everyda violence perpetrated by men and tacitly accepted by politicians and representatives of the police. A VICE production, Showgirls of Pakistan offers during almost two hours intimate shootings an unique view of the everyday life of those dancers. 

I´ve watched the movie with a big curiosity, particularly regarding the dance in itself, and some of the participants do dance in such a seamless dynamic way that made me so jealous. Those women are so passionate about what they are doing, turning into balls of fire in the front of (mostly men) audiences in awe. But being a woman dancer has its toll and often the girls are victims of death threats and some are even beaten, shot death by partners or people following religious instigators. Women should be aware of men´s values which also includes considering the family values and honor besides anything else.

It is a world changing on the go, which may start with the innocent ´How´s life treating my fans?´ on social media and end up in a bloodbath. The direct intimate access the crew got into the everyday life, including the ups and downs of the relationships, the betrayal and making over, creates an interesting overview of the situation. 

Showgirls of Pakistan reveals the social interactions and dynamics in nowadays Pakistan - I´ve found fascinating and would definitely love to learn more about the ´guru´ system, and how it really works as both an entreprise and source of prestige/or denial of it - but also the everyday cruelty and frustrations, which reflects in a language of a highest level of aggressivity. 

There is no need of complaining or rolling the eyes in contempt, this is how things are.  Humans do have sometimes such a horrid way of turning everything beautiful and free - like mujra dances, for instance - into a tool of ugliness. If there is something we, as humans, we can do, is to stop forcing ourself to judge the others according to our narrow mindness and leave people - particularly women - to breath free. Which is an utopian wish at a very great extent, obviously. 

Book Review: The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat

 

I´ve started to listen to the audiobook of The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat - read by the actress Bahni Turpin - curious to hear more voices about the Ethiopian diaspora. From this point of view, the book was satisfactory and I am looking forward to explore more the information in this respect.

However, from the literary point of view, I was greatly deceived.

An unnamed teenager girl is the storyteller and one of the most important witness of the story. At the beginning of the story, she is part of an Ethiopian communa in Boston, where she lives with her father. From there on, the story is took back in time, back and forth, built around male characters as her father and Ayale, the mysterious parking lot attendant with a very special mission that we will - unfortunately - let known about only in the very last chapters of the book. 

There is a huge lap between the beginning - which sounded so promising - and the end - which has a grain of fascination. In-between, a lot of dead time(s) for the story development, although the writing flows. Once in a while I just got completely woken up from my letargic - passive - listening, by sentences like that: ´How do you make a new country? You go to a land store?´. But most of the time, was idly waiting for the next chapter to enfolds. And another one. And another one.

There are almost four year covered, and the story oscillates between the narrator´s growing up story and her unclear family situation - what actually happened with the mother we will have the chance to be shared - again - only at the end of the story, and her interaction with her father - and the Ayale, the parking lot attendant, story, whom plays a complex role for her: employer for small jobs around the Ethiopian community, lover-friend-male figure - and a kind of secret agent of national change and revival, in diaspora and abroad. I felt largely frustrated for being left to wait for so long, but it was also the general feeling of guessing the potential of a story that, in my opinion, was largely betrayed.

The Parking Lot Attendant was one of those disappointing reading episodes, but I will keep looking further for more Ethiopian topics and authors in the next weeks...

Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Review: Beirut Noir

 There are cities carrying the heavy weight of their unhappy circumstances...

There is a deep sense of despair pertaining from the 15 short stories included in Beirut Noir, published by Akashic Books part of their Noir Series. 

´A city that dances in his wounds´ is one of the many descriptions that seems to fit a city whose pain is with no end in sight. Dismantled by sectarian violence, war, war again, civil war, haunted by death and accidents and despair, Beirut is creating its own geography delineated with blood and cemetery stones. But is doing it with glamour, that desperate breath of life that no one can take it away from a body fighting hard to pump air in its lungs. No matter how precarious is this air.

Originally written in English, French and Arabic, the stories are showing a city that one will never found in any touristic brochures (facing the threats of all kind, people used to visit Lebanon before COVID, with different representations in mind). Located in different neighbourhoud, tracing a wide diversity of situations and personalities, some of the characters seem to fight to get out of time. Even when they are abroad - in North or South America - it is the smell of death they cannot get rid of. They are not talking about death from the comfort of a café house facing the beauty of Mediterranean sea on a sunny day. Death is a palpable feeling, as are the butterflies courting the jacaranda trees. From a second to another, fragments of detonated flesh can just blow up against the beautiful blue sky. Death is out of the philosophical question, is as real as a flu or brushing your teeth. 

There is also a before and an after, but the clear description of the tragedy is needed. There is no end in sight for the tragedies so, reader, be aware to make your homeworks in reading about the catastrophy one is actually writing about.

With such a high human stake, it´s natural that not all stories are equal because there is a sense of emergency which pushes forward the writing and not everyone can successfully face the challenge. I also felt that the book is not finished, that there is much more left to be said than already expressed through the stories. But, what´s for sure, is that once one reads this Beirut Noir - or listen to it, as I did, narrated by Elias Khalil - would develop a special empathy that this city deserves. Not the ´colonial´ kind of empathy of a condescending ´Westerner´ looking from high above to the poor people in the Middle East, but the deep, genuine human empathy that makes us all human beings, at least once in a while. The collection was curated by Iman Humaydan, among others, co-author of PEN Lebanon. 

A special not to the cover, a photography that says thousands of stories.

For me, it was my first ´Noir´ Series, but definitely not the last, as I do have a special edition coming up for review in the next weeks and can´t wait to share it soon...

Rating: 3.5 stars

An Excellent YA Novel: The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman

´My mother and brothers died because of our religion. Most of our family was wiped out. And today we still aren´t free to worship. When does it end? I will be cautious, but I refuse to live in a cage´.

Set in various locations in what once used to be the Soviet Union during different timeframes, The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman is an YA with a very complex structure. The complexity encompasses both the characters development and the narrative construction.

The story is going back and forth on two time streams: the first covers events during the Great Patriotic War - the Soviet term for the military confrontation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945; the second, the predominant one, is set in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The two historical periods are connected through the characters common to both timeframes.

The fathers of teenage girls Valentina and Oksana were working at the nuclear plant and will die following the accident. Valentina is Jewish. Oksana´s father, a frustrated violent person, taught her daughter to distrust Jews repeating a trope so familiar to my ears in way too many different contexts and languages: ´Jews weren´t Soviet citizens. They were intruders´. Fate united the two girls that from enemies will turn into best friends during their stay at Valentina´s grandmother, Rita/Rifka, in the then Leningrad - nowadays St. Petersburg. As Oksana has to return to her mother, that meanwhile found a new partner, she is going again through abusive episodes, but her newly best friend which happens to be a very creative inventive person, has a solution that will take her away from the cycle of family violence.

The story is not only complex, but has new twists every couple of paragraphs. I am not a regular consummer of YA, but literally I hardly wanted to take a break before discovering the new story development. The characters themselves are coping with a lot of traumatic events - abuse, parental alienation, loss, loneliness, to mention only a few - that are part of their personal story in the making. During their personal journey through troubled historical times, they are changing, learn how to survive and discover the good and the bad of the human nature. The voices of the children are not only adequate to the usual life experience at this stage - their hopes that in the end, things will be fine with their fathers and life will resume its normality made me seriously think about how hopeless is hope (Hope: A tragedy in the words and thoughts of Shalom Auslander describes so adequately this feeling).

The Blackbird Girls is a book with predominant female characters where the males are just disposable, short appearances in the train of life. For the YA audience of 2021, the events accounted in the book, situated in a very remote time - WWII, Chernobyl, the hardships of the everyday life in the Soviet Union, especially for Jews (and who are those Jews, anyway, some young reader may ask) - are seamlessly inserted into the story, without too much ado, but offering enough elements to make sense of the story. 

Last but not least, an extra point to the marvelous cover. 

Rating: 5 stars